Ba Shan

Maybe going to a Hunan restaurant, a cuisine renown for the liberal use of both red and green chillies, the night after an evening of sizzling lamb chops at Tayyabs was not the smartest of moves. That said, nothing was going to move me from a dish of Chilli Chicken: a big bowl of red chillies with nuggets of chicken hidden amongst them. A sort of extra-hot lucky dip.

Ba Shan seems to divide critics, who either say that it is not hot and spicy enough, not authentic enough or just not very good. Well I cannot judge the authenticity, but it is certainly as good a restaurant as I have ever been to in China. It also, very authentically for many a restaurant in Asia, has a menu with pictures of the dishes. For a China ignoramus like me, this helps. As did going with somebody who has travelled extensively in the region, although he did confess that we had chosen badly, with too many sweet dishes and not enough hot ones.

As well as the aforementioned chicken dish, we had a lovely cold starter of spinach with sesame sauce, some delicately spiced scallop with green chillies and fish flavoured aubergine. We went for this latter not only as I like the vegetable (yes, I know it is technically a fruit, but usage is everything), but also because the name of the dish reminded me of the Monty Python voiceover sketch, where the Bishop of Leicester declares that a certain beer that he is advertising is “the mighty lager, with the world's first great taste of fish!”. I confess, I wouldn't have picked the fish flavour out, but it was as nice a vegetable dish as I've had in a Chinese restaurant for a while. I also like things deep fried, so, whilst I would normally eschew any tofu dish, deep fry it and I’ll partake. As I did here, with a dish that was just too sweet for my taste.

The room is small, the service friendly and the quality far higher than the majority of the Chinese restaurants in Soho/Chinatown.

From the people who brought you Bar Shu…I've been here loads of times since it opened and they have now changed the menu to make it much more elaborate. I think I preferred the street food formula. Having said that there is a lot to to like in the new menu, which is now even more similar to Bar Shu. I love the prawns in oil. It may not sounds like much but it is delicious — a massive bowl of the crustacea in a fiery liquid. Gong bao chicken, a Bar Shu classic, is also very good and moreish.